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Author: Subject: A very Big Problem, Please Help Me
Hermes_Trismegistus
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[*] posted on 28-2-2004 at 15:37


Quote:
Originally posted by Geomancer
That is, introduce the waste into the bottom of the vessel, where it is then vaporized into the incoming air stream?


Ahhh!....well then my confusion now lies with the sheme to "vaporise" solid waste.

as for other fuels, liquid and gas, I find their complexity their achilles heel. It was for that reason that coal remained the fuel of choice until the middle of the 19th century. Even then, only the need to be independant of England's coal industry, spawned the development of the liquid petrochemical industry. Before then, gasoline was considered a useless and dangerous (which it is) byproduct of kerosene manufacture and only that uselessness prompted its natural application towards engines (it was VERY cheap). It was originally intended to be used in the engines that powered various equipments around the refinery and thus avoid supplanting the valuable products, namely tar and kerosene.

(North America has far more oil than coal.)

If I was to use another fuel, I would entirely avoid the gases and focus on the heavier fraction oils (vastly more BTU's for the buck).

Steve Chastain has a relatively simple design for a laminar flow burner nozzle suitible for the combustion of used motor oil in this $20 book shown here
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks5/chalfur/index.html
Even with this design, you'll still need to pay a machinist 50 bucks or get a half hour on a metal lathe.

The only other option, assuming you're not a master machinist would be propane. And despite our level of comfort with this gas (because it's so common) it's difficult to get high temperatures and reasonable efficiencies without using a stock burner and high pressure secondary pump.

You'd also need a gas stream pre-heater, not something you want to jury rig.

I looked into using propane for a pottery kiln and came away educated, the reason propane is used for BBQ'ing is because it burns so cool (compared to other fuels) and doesn't promote hot spots. It also burns cool enough that you don't need special nozzles to burn the fuel, even thin stamped sheet steel won't melt.

It also had the bonus of previously being almost useless to the big oil companies. For decades the sale of propane barbeque's were subsidized by a conglomerate of big oil looking to turn a waste problem into a money maker, years of research were put into finding every possible use for it.

Big oil themselves don't use it to generate power onsite because it is so difficult and expensive to generate the volume and intensity of heat required to operate a boiler using propane.

Even with modern technology, all new power plants are nuclear, hydro-electric, or coal fired.

However, the consumer is used to paying thousands of percent over the real price (retail v.s. industrial wholesale) so it is easier to convince them that propane is a good thing

Even today, most base model propane BBQ's (that use the most gas) are still sold for less than the cost of manufacture, by daughter companies who are owned by petrochemical firms.

The more I looked into it, the less I liked propane/natural gas.

I found charcoal to be the best solution, you see I live in rural Canada, firewood is cheap and plentiful and charcoal is easy to make.
http://www.lindsaybks.com/bks7/bchar/index.html




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[*] posted on 9-3-2004 at 18:59


What a facinating story!

I have worked with high vacuums for years... and put bluntly, in high vacuum systems, a pump failure NEVER leads to an explosion!

The jokers story aside.... I was under the impression VX was not particularly stable stuff... while the precursors are much more stable (which is why in battlefield shells, the mixing of the precursors doesnt occur till AFTER the shell is fired).

The simplest thing of course.... as with most chemical spill is vent to atomsphere. Dunno what scale is being talked here, but if you can fire tons of the stuff onto the battle field and have it non- toxic in a day or two..... venting a few hunderd ml would be no problem....obviously when noone is around. From eyeballing the structure.... I dont think this would be very water stable.... and would be eaten by NaOH very quickly.....Just spray conc. NaOH over everything, wait for a day.... then rinse.

And a thought for anyone dumb enough to actually think about makin VX... the secret of a long life... is to try not to shorten it!

[Edited on 10-3-2004 by Proteios]
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[*] posted on 9-3-2004 at 19:11
nope


Impure VX may decompose in storage, but when pure it is storage-stable. Neither does it rapidly degrade (depending on your definition of "rapidly";) under ordinary environmental conditions in the open. The reason that in some munitions VX was made by mixing chemicals after the weapon was fired is that the unmixed chemicals, while quite toxic, were not nearly as toxic as VX itself. Thus the munitions could be stored with one of the two vital chemicals present, then the other chemical added shortly before use, and the two mixed only once the shell was fired. This would reduce the danger of accidents in handling of chemical weapons.



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[*] posted on 9-3-2004 at 19:22


meh.... right about the atmospheric stability.....I guess the stuff becomes 'non-toxic' through dispersion..... found this on one of the links above...

VX has low solubility in water (3% at 20°). It hydrolyzes with a half-life of 350 days at pH 7 and 25° and 100 days at pH 2-3; basic condition accelerate hydrolysis (half-life 16 minutes at pH13 and 1.3 minutes at pH 14). A number of toxic hydrolysis products form at pH 7-10, notably EA 2192 (CAS Registry Number 73207-98-4).

gurgle conc. KOH over everything would work a treat......however... another thought... anyone dumb enough to make VX without having first worked out how to get rid of it, or decontaminate in the event of the unforseen.... deserves everything they get!
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